Halfway to a Worthless Ideal Arrangement
by caitlinalicia
Summary: [ PreRENT ] Gym class would save your life. He could save your life.
1. Prologue

There's a house on Raritan St. It's not an exceptionally unique home; in fact, it looks like a lot of the houses on Raritan St. It looks like a lot of houses on a lot of streets in a lot of places. It is light blue with white trim, with a not-too-green-yet-far-from-dead lawn that gets mowed once a week by a child paid $20 to do so. There's a cherry tree near the front window that looks dead nearly all year round, except for a few months in the spring when it blossoms. Sometimes there is a red, 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit Convertible in the driveway outside of the two car garage; sometimes there isn't. The curtains are often drawn on all the windows, but sometimes in the summer, the pale, quiet face of a bored teenager peaks through up in the top, left most window.

Inside the walls are white and the carpet is white and there are smooth granite countertops in the kitchen and all of the bathrooms. The beige walls in the den are covered in duplicated copies of diplomas from Scarsdale High School, Columbia University, Columbia Medical School, and various other honors and degrees. In the family room, just above the brick fireplace is a blown up photo of a husband, a wife, and their two children—twins, one girl, one boy. The husband stands tall and smiles with his dark hair and thick mustache, one arm wrapped around his blonde, curly haired, toothy wife. The son smiles with his mouth closed and thick, black rimmed glasses perched high on the bridge of his nose—the glare of the flash on the lenses makes it harder to tell if his smile is reaching his eyes. He's dressed in a suit to match his father, though he doesn't look much older than ten, and the tie is draw tight around his neck. Beside him, his twin sister is flashing the same smile as their mother. She's wearing a pink and white sundress, which seems like it was made for the sole purpose of making her look like a miniature doll of her mother.

The father is a doctor, no, a _surgeon_, who heads up the ICU at Lawrence Hospital Center. The mother was a stay at home mom until both of her kids reached middle school, and now she volunteers down at the City Hall, heading up the Youth Advisory Panel. The daughter at sometime in her life has been a swimmer, a soccer player, a softball player, and a tennis player, but has now, at seventeen, settled on gymnastics. She gets A's in her classes, but doesn't challenge herself with the honors courses because she feels it will distract her from gymnastics. She likes to holds it over her brother's head that she's three minutes older than him. She's made sure to establish and maintain as many friendships as she could throughout high school, as it gives her an excuse to stay away from the house. The son was at first encouraged to participate in all the sports his sister did, but was withdrawn as soon as he father saw him fail miserably. He focuses on school instead and if all goes right, will graduate with a 4.32 GPA. It's been decided that he'll grow up to be a doctor, just like his father. He's shy and rather awkward at times and has not had the luck his sister has had with friends. He wishes he had an excuse to stay away from the house.

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There's a run down, but very lively trailer park just off the highway, down a hill from it about twenty yards. Cherry Hills, it's called. There's a sad excuse for a forest behind it, with a dirt path running through it along side a shallow creek. On the very edge of the wood there's one of the larger trailers. Egg shell on the outside and baby blue on the inside. It's got four off-white steps leading up to the creaky front door with the torn screen. The living room bleeds into the kitchen and the dinning room, the only separation being the few walls that distinguish the bathroom and bedroom. It's not dirty, though. The couch is second-hand and the TV doesn't get the best reception. The counters are perpetually stained and one of the legs on the kitchen table is shorter than the rest, held steady by a rarely used dictionary, but it's not dirty. Dishes are washed as soon as they are use and placed back in the cabinets and clothes are always put away in the closets.

On the wall in the bedroom are taped three pictures. One is a picture of a young boy, maybe in third grade, with light brown hair and an uncontrolled cowlick in front. There's a crease down the center of the photo, like it was folded in someone's wallet at one point. The next picture is the picture of a young girl, probably late teens or early twenties, sitting on a swing in a park with a tiny baby in her lap. The baby is giggling and smiling as the woman presses her lips to its nearly bald head; there's a huge scratch across its left cheek. And the last photo is of the same boy that is in the first one (and probably the second one). He's older now, fourteen or fifteen, and he's grinning up towards the camera as he holds a large acoustic guitar with a red bow tied around the neck. There's a tiny tree in the background with strands of popcorn hanging on it and tinsel strew about; it's Christmas. There are no pictures of a father.

There's a pristine, white uniform laid out neatly on the bed in the one bedroom and jeans and a t-shirt tossed over the arm of the couch. The mom works as many shifts as she can get as nurse at Lawrence Hospital Center, and the son recently took an after-school job at a record store a few blocks down the street to help out. He smokes and walks to school, and smokes and walks to work. He has taught himself to play guitar and has it in his head that he'll be a famous rockstar some day and his mom won't have to worry about money anymore. Sometimes he cuts classes and hangs with the kids down at "The Corner", and sometimes his teachers tell him he's either dumb or just not applying himself, but he can't find the motivation to care. He feels guilty when his mom begs him to try harder, but it never lasts long and a day later he's back to slacking off. He doesn't think anyone in this town is worth his time and he counts the days until graduation on an old calendar from 1976.


	2. Chapter One

"So, did you two get your schedules today?" he asks. His voice is level; it's not much of a question. He already knows we got our schedules today. Now he's opening up the flood gates, preparing us for an onslaught of follow-up questions and criticisms on our classes and teachers. I nod my head slightly and shove my peas around on my plate a bit, flinching as my fork scraps against the porcelain and admiring the green dots as they roll into my mashed potatoes and bump up against my untouched medium-well steak. He scolds me, "Mark, don't scratch up your mother's good china."

I can hear Cindy swallow next to me, and I'm tempted to make a face—hearing people eat disgusts me—but I raise my glass of milk to my lips instead, knowing how unappreciated the gesture would be. Cindy would pout, mom would look at me disapprovingly, and dad would tell me to apologize or go to bed without dessert; and while I would throw my hands up in mock surrender and joke that it was just a little face, it'd blow up into something more, like there's actually a deeper meaning to it, and the direct insult actually shows how much I loath my twin sister and how I secretly hope she chokes on the chunk of meat she just swallowed. Nothing in my family is ever taken lightly, so I gulp my milk, keep quiet, and make sure the look on my face cannot be used against me. When Cindy begins to speak, I know my parents' eyes are now on her, and it's safe for me to put my glass back down.

"Yup, we went and picked them up this afternoon," she replies with a proud smile on her face. She's proud because today was her first time driving without mom or dad in the car. We both turned seventeen last week, but she only just got her driver's license yesterday. It's not that she's a bad driver, per se, she just likes to claim she was too busy this past year to get it. "Everything on mine looks fine; except it turns out Randall isn't teaching Chemistry this year, Smith is. I talked to Lisa, though, and she's seems to be under the impression that Smith is even better than Randall, so I guess I can't really complain." Dad looks at her, tries to smile like he's interested, and moves on to me.

"Mark?"

There's a particularly dry lump of mashed potatoes in the back of my throat, so I take another quick swig of milk and cough to clear it. "Yeah, mine's fine, too. AP Calculus with McAtee, AP European History with Roberts, AP Literature with Rosario, French IV with Andre, AP Biology with Owens, and gym," I spit out hurriedly. It's a mouthful and I've managed to memorize it in only a few hours—each class, in what order, and with what teacher; I knew I'd be quizzed on it at dinner. I also knew he'd be perfectly content with my schedule, except for one tiny little thing…

"Gym?"

"Yeah, gym. Football and Soccer, 7th period with Johnson," I mumble.

"Why would you take gym? I thought you were going to be in AP Humanities?"

"I _was_ going to be, until my counselor told me I needed a gym credit to graduate. Believe me, it's not like I want to be in it—have you seen me play football and soccer? It's a sorry sight," I try to joke. I even give it a little laugh and a half smile, but he's not laughing along. He's pulled a slight frown and his eyes are focused on the table's centerpiece—a nice little array of lilies my mom picked up on her way home from work.

He lets out an indigent huff, like he can't believe _I_ actually have to take _gym_. Like it's completely ludicrous that a child would need to take _gym_ to _graduate_, when gym is just a bunch of running around and chasing after a ball and won't do _anybody_ any good in the_ real world_. "That's going to lower your GPA," he says matter-of-factly.

"I know," I tell him. I've eaten all of my peas and carrots and mashed potatoes and drank all of my milk. If I really want to distract myself from saying anymore more, I'm going to have to resort to cutting up my steak. Being a vegetarian is far from admired in my family; it's almost frowned upon, actually, so my mom makes a point to throw some meat on my plate every night, no matter how many times I tell her I don't want it and no matter how many times I don't eat it. She'd rather it go to waste than not serve it to me at all. I raise my knife tentatively, stab my fork into the slab of beef, and cut off a small bite. As I shove it into my mouth, I think I see Cindy smirk at me smugly. She doesn't get scolded for her faces.

He shoves away from the table roughly and throws the napkin that was resting in his lap onto his cleaned plate. "After you clear the table, I want to see you in the den." His voice has dropped nearly a whole octave, and I know that even the sight of me grinding a bite of steak between my teeth won't subdue his dissatisfaction with me right now.

Somehow, the fact that a gym credit is one of the graduation requirements at my school is my fault. He'll twist it so it's my fault. He's gotten it into his head, and will try to get it into mine, that now, because of this gym class, I'll never get into Columbia. I'll never be Pre-Med. I'll end up graduating high school without honors and become just another one of those broke, starving, cold, pathetic hoodlums polluting the streets of New York City. I'll be without a family, without friends, without a home, and without a purpose. I'll stumble through life with just the clothes on my back and memories of a golden childhood when my parents gave me every opportunity they'd never had; until one day, when it's snowing and all I have to protect me from the cold is a thin sweater and a tattered old scarf, I'll simply collapse beside a dumpster and never wake up. I'll die alone. And no one will even be around to claim my body.

All because I had to take Football and Soccer, instead of AP Humanities.


End file.
